


Candle Wick enough to Sew a Shirt

by braigwen_s



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Backstory, Book: Feet of Clay, Cockbill Street, Gen, Love Enough to Raise a Child, Poverty, Sex Work, Strength Enough to Build a Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:42:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26979772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: This is the truth about old Mrs Flora Easy, who lived on 27 Cockbill Street.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 37





	Candle Wick enough to Sew a Shirt

This is the truth about old Mrs Flora Easy, who lived on 27 Cockbill Street:

Mrs Flora Easy had been a seamstress in her youth. She had been a successful one, working in the Whore Pits, and by age thirty had earned enough to be the madam of, if not a house of ill repute, most certainly a shack of the same.

Our Mum Vimes, who lived on 21 Cockbill Street, was a champion liar, and Commander Samuel Vimes never worked out Mrs Easy six doors down was ever anything other than somebody who raised children and “did a lot of sewing”.

This is the truth about old Mrs Flora Easy, who lived on 27 Cockbill Street:

The year the barricades went up on Treacle Mine Road, another madam, a Madam Meserole, had come from out of town and bought Mrs Flora Easy’s business. She paid Mrs Flora Easy enough to provide for a family for several years. She didn’t pay her enough to provide for a whole street for several years, but that was Mrs Easy did with it.

Commander Samuel Vimes did wonder how his mother had ever paid for him to go to school, however briefly it may have been for, but he never thought it was Mrs Easy six doors down.

This is the truth about old Mrs Flora Easy, who lived on 27 Cockbill Street:

Lord Vetinari knew everything, as he so often tended to. His aunt had tried to help Mrs Easy by buying her business, but she had failed because she did not understand what life was really like in places like Cockbill Street in The Shades. Lord Vetinari was a person who had made it his life’s work to _do better_ and to _be better_. When young Mildred Easy, Mrs Easy’s granddaughter, applied for a job in the Palace, he made certain that she got it.

Young Mildred Easy really thought he hadn’t told the cook to let her take leftovers home for Old Mrs Easy.

This is the truth about old Mrs Flora Easy, who lived on 27 Cockbill Street:

When Rosemary Palm was a young girl, she had worked in, if not a house of ill repute, most certainly a shack of the same. The madam there had given a roof above her head, and people to run to for help, and the knowledge that men owed her for her work and not the other way around. When Commander Samuel Vimes walked into the Rats Chamber, carrying a gleaming axe… if he'd been there to execute the city council Rosemary would have bowed her head and let him get on with it, because while they were messing about with false kings and Bearhuggers old Mrs Easy, the woman who had taken her off the streets and given her protection, had died, and Rosemary Palm was party to it.

Other Guild Leaders saw her acceptance of impending death, but they never bothered to wonder why.

This is the truth about old Mrs Flora Easy, who lived on 27 Cockbill Street:

None of this made her important. None of this made her death more of a tragedy. The fact that her life was tied to the great reforms of Ankh-Morpork, and that she’d known two of its greatest reformers, Samuel Vimes and Rosemary Palm, and that she’d done business with Lord Vetinari’s aunt, did not make her more valuable. It wasn’t about value or history or what role they had once filled or played. A person was a person, and no-one was less ‘important’ than anyone.

Commander Samuel Vimes and Mildred Easy both knew that, and Rosemary Palm had remembered. Our Mum Vimes had always known.


End file.
